Virtue

Within the Literary Gulag these days, that "black flower of civilized society" (Hawthorne), are the Defectors. They refuse to embrace a myriad of social causes oozing with "virtue." Because
they are incarcerated, our Gulagians can only dream of driving sports
cars or luxury sedans or pick-up trucks rather than the eco-friendly
alternatives. Though forced to eat gruel, they fantasize about devouring red meat. Gulagians acknowledge the possibility of geo-warming while wondering what global policies might genuinely reverse the trend. They
consider voting for the Republican Party, if only the incarcerated
could cast ballots, out of a conviction that tit-for-tat, not pacifism,
provides the winning strategy. They are social pariahs to a literary establishment that is consumed with its own "virtue." Indeed, those outside the Gulag appear manifestly good. They decry violence and advocate programs that protect children and the most marginalized members of society. They
honor authors who have risen from the ashes of injustice, or who have
merely imagined such characters, to protest these inequities. The feminized readers of these stories cry. They imbibe the moral outrage convinced that they, too, will become "virtuous" by proxy. This
is the dismal state of fiction these days as innovation, truth, and
excellence have been relegated to the Gulag while the literary
establishment extols its self-righteous "virtuosity."

But what is that to which we refer as virtue? For the Greeks, the word arête translates as both excellence and virtue with the implied search for truth. Plato,
concerned with living the good life, noted that only under special
circumstances are individuals able to tame their unruly appetites to
devote their lives to the search for truth and of these only the most
exalted will harness their desires to obtain the good for which humans
yearn. Aristotle saw happiness as that
"activity of the soul expressing virtue." For Zeno, virtue was the sole
constituent of happiness. All others—birth, beauty, honors, and riches—but secondary attributes. (Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness, Grove Press, 2006, pp. 39, 45, 54-57)

And where might this Greek notion of virtue be found in literature today? Is it evident in Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and celebrated by the literati? Middlesex presents the story of the hermaphrodite of Greek heritage, Callie, a girl who at fourteen becomes Cal, the man. Might virtue to be found in Jason Goodwin's The Snake Stone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), a novel that has as its gumshoe,
Investigator Yashim, a eunuch who solves mysteries in historic Istanbul? Never
mind the latter's Orientalist flavor, its metrosexual guile, its risqué
decadence implied by the surgical removal of testes—all the better for
women to identify with the neutered, "sensitive" male. For the feminized readers of Middlesex and The Snake Stone, these stories achieve "virtue" by celebrating marginalized boys and men whom they may nurture as their own.

For the founders of America,
virtue was manifest in how one lived one's public life in the pursuit
of greater good, espousing Enlightenment precepts that advanced the
nation and its polity. Honor and
reputation, not the personal self-fashioned performances of the "I"
practiced today, were directed toward the exalted pursuit of nation
building and political governance. The
founders placed great emphasis on character, a public manifestation of
virtue that embodied the values and responsibilities necessary to
foster civilization. These leaders were
self-conscious and self-made; they embraced power and its institutions
though favoring a meritocracy that eschewed the aristocratic privilege
of inheritance associated with "old" Europe. For
the founders, disinterestedness in the pursuit of the greater public
good was the sacrifice necessary for inspired leadership. For as John Adams noted, "public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." A republic lasts, he argued, only so long as "a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, . . . [is] established in the Minds of the People, . . . Superiour to all private Passions." Nevertheless, Adams was far from sanguine. "Is there in the World a Nation, which deserves this Character?" Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, The Penguin Press, 2006, pp. 16, 23, 26 180)

How might the virtuous beliefs of the founders be represented in fiction today? Consider M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party (Candlewick), recipient of the 2006 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. It is a historical novel beautifully written and deftly plotted. Yet, what is the import of its story? First, the plot. It
is a buildungsroman featuring a black youth, Ocatavian, raised in the
home of enlightened philosophers on the eve of the American Revolution. His mother is an African princess. He
is raised and educated in the European enlightenment tradition,
although he discovers that both he and his mother are the subjects of
experiments to demonstrate the genetic inferiority of Africans. Revolution breaks out. The African princess dies as a result of receiving an experimental smallpox inoculation at a "Pox Party." Octavian runs away and eventually joins the Patriot cause as a musical performer. He is caught and brought back to the household where he is held captive until one of the instructors frees him. That is the story summary. But, again, what is its import? The novel could not have won the National Book Award except for its unremitting focus on social justice. The
history of the American Revolution is presented against the backdrop of
slavery, racism, human rights violations, and the ravages of war. The
enlightenment tradition, the erudite passages on classical music and
education, the depiction of gentlemanly deportment presented with a
baroque style and syntax representative of a bygone era are overlooked
by the critics because they serve as foils to the pious implications of
the story—the triumph of "virtue" over racial prejudice and white, male
power. How else to explain the award of the
National Book Award to one of the most "elitist" stories conceived for
a young audience in years except that it lays waste to the values of
the founders in an effort to ensure the ascendancy of social justice.

Today the Greek interpretation of virtue—excellence in the pursuit of truth—has little resonance in our culture. Nor would most Americans in the 21st century demand their politicians live up to the standards of the
founders by expecting them to sacrifice personal desires for the
furtherance of public good. For as Hunter has shown, the neoclassical ideals of virtue and character were losing favor in the early decades of the 20th century, increasingly replaced by relativistic values of a Godless
civilization that encompassed a lifestyle with the ever changeable
supreme Self as arbiter and actuator of one's own moral realm. (James
Davison Hunter, The Death of Character, Basic Books, 2000, pp. xiii-xv, 5-8)

Character is formed in relation to convictions and is manifested in the capacity to abide by those convictions even in, especially in, the face of temptation. This
being so, the demise of character begins with the destruction of
creeds, the convictions, and the "god-terms" that made those creeds
sacred to us and inviolable within us.

This destruction occurs simultaneously with the rise of "values." Values are truths that have been deprived of their commanding character. They are substitutes for revelation, imperatives that have dissolved into a range of possibilities. The
very word "value" signifies the reduction of truth to utility, taboo to
fashion, conviction to mere preference; all provisional, all
exchangeable. Both values and "lifestyle"—a
way of living that reflects the accumulation of one's values—bespeak a
world in which nothing is sacred. Neither word carries the weight of conviction; the commitment to truths made sacred. Indeed, sacredness is conspicuous in its absence. There
is nothing there that one need believe commanding and demanding its
due, for "truth" is but a matter of taste and temperament. Formed
against a symbolic order made up of "values" and different "lifestyles"
is the Self—malleable, endlessly developing, consuming, realizing,
actualizing, perfecting—but again, something less than character."
(Hunter, pp. xiii-xiv)

In
marked contrast to the neoclassicalinterpretation of virtue and its
debased postmodern equivalent, Self, is the effort by scientists to
utilize the terms "altruistic" and "cooperative behavior" as a means of
providing value-free terminology with which to examine social
participation. The dispassionate language
reflects innovations made in the mode of inquiry founded on
probabilistic reasoning developed during the Scientific Revolution and
the Enlightenment. These advances laid the
foundations for a mathematical and "rationalistic" methodology that
would influence Darwinian investigations of natural selection that
continue today. Scientists, therefore,
rather than ask "What is this good we refer to as virtue?" instead
raise the question "Is there such a thing as virtue?" before posing
"How would altruism further the evolutionary prospects of animals and
humans?" For if there is no selective
advantage to cooperation, scientists contend, it is highly unlikely
that the trait would persist. Consequently, they are interested in
determining whether cooperative behavior is naturally occurring and, if
so, to assess whether it is encoded in the DNA or transmitted by social
means. Therefore, they ask, "Is altruistic
behavior independent of self-interest or does it occur in order to
serve the interest of the community by means of genetic advantage
conferred to members of the tribe?"

While writing On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859),
Darwin noted that both animals and people form groups to achieve common
goals, a realization that initially appeared to conflict with his views
on natural selection. However, by the time he published The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin allowed for the possibility of altruistic behavior among kin as a means
of improving the reproductive potential of the "family." He also
introduced the idea of reciprocity, unrelated but familiar individuals
assisting one another for mutual gain. Today,
evolutionary biologists and animal behaviorists seek the genetic and
molecular basis of cooperative behaviors and the social and
environmental influences that might motivate these actions. (Elizabeth Pennisi, "How Did Cooperative Behavior Evolve?" Science,309, 93, 2005)

In "Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation," (Science, 314, 1560-1563, 2006), Martin Nowak has extended Darwin's notions of kin selection and reciprocity to present five scenarios influencing the evolution of cooperation. For as he notes, a population of cooperators has the highest average fitness, defectors, the lowest. Nowak begins with the most basic strategy for cooperation Kin Selection or the premise that genetic relatedness motivates cooperation. Pioneering research by both Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene, 1976) and E.O. Wilson (Sociobiology, 1975),
respectively, suggest that "altruism" is motivated by a "desire" on the
part of genes to ensure familial reproduction and that all behavior is
influenced by epigenetic rules established by evolution.

Direct Reciprocity is the second rule for the evolution of cooperation, according to Nowak. It
is cooperation between unrelated individuals and is particularly
applicable when an offer is not especially costly for the donor though
beneficial to the recipient. The
effectiveness of Direct Reciprocity has been tested with respect to
mathematical Game Theory and is applicable here because these game
strategies suggest the inherently competitive and adversarial nature of
human interactions. The simplest, most effective strategy is tit-for-tat. At each round, the players respond to each other's move. Cooperation is met by cooperation, defection by defection. This
method cannot overcome mistakes since defection leads to sustained
retaliation. A Generous tit-for-tat strategy has the initiator
cooperating with the other player and even, occasionally, when the
latter defects [based on a cost-to-benefit ratio]. However,
the most effective game strategy is win-stay, lose-shift, which
suggests a player repeat a move when successful, change when not.

Because Direct Reciprocity relies on repeated engagement, which clearly is not always the case, scientists began examining Indirect Reciprocity,
which assumes complex social interactions among players. One individual
helps another without possibility of direct reciprocation. The
relationship is one of exchange, such as money to a charity, in which
the outcome for the donor is the potential elevation of one's
reputation. Indirect Reciprocity is effective when the recipient's reputation exceeds the cost of the donor's act of altruism. Further up the cooperative ladder is Network Reciprocity in which network clusters assist one another in order to biologically prevail.

Finally, there is Group Selection, the most complex strategy of all. Its population is composed of cooperators and defectors. Cooperators help within their group, defectors do not. The reproduction of individuals is proportional to the payoff. Offspring join the parent's group. Groups
can split, and there is competition between groups. Cooperator groups
grow faster than defector groups, although in mixed
cooperator/defectors groups, defectors reproduce faster. Selection within mixed groups favors defectors whereas selection between groups favors cooperators. A
payoff matrix can then be derived to test the effectiveness of Group
Selection and its varying scenarios, as well as the four other rules
pertaining to the evolution of cooperation. This
calculation is obtained by means of a benefit-to-cost ratio measured
with respect to an altruistic act that is greater than a given critical
value. The payoff matrices can than be examined within the framework of
evolutionary game dynamics. (Nowak)

For
the nonscientist who may never have considered analytically why an
individual cooperates or defects, these rules governing the evolution
of cooperation suggest the inherently competitive and potentially
adversarial nature of interactions between players. Thus, a range of strategies may be employed to maximize advantage in this game we refer to as life. What
is clear, however, is that as far as scientists are concerned virtue,
unrelated to personal or genetic gain, does not compute.

Enter Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist whose discipline straddles the divide between the sciences and the humanities. In his recent study The Happiness Hypothesis (Basic Books, 2006) and its scientific distillation, "The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology," Science, 316,
998-1002, 2007), Haidt argues that our moral decisions are based on
primitive emotional behavior that develops prior to language and
reasoned judgment. Consequently, rational
analysis based on evidence is considered after we have already arrived
at our emotional outlook that dictates our actions. He suggests that our motives are selfish, although he asserts that they are guided by moral norms. For the purposes of our examination of virtue, the most interesting studies referenced in The Happiness Hypothesis are those undertaken by C.D. Batson at the University of Kansas. (Batson, C. D., Kobrynowicz, D., Dinnerstein, J. L., Kampf, H. C., & Wilson, A. D., 1997. "In a very different voice: Unmasking moral hypocrisy," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
72, 1335-1348 and Batson, C.D., Thompson, E.R., Seuferling, G.,
Whitney, H., & Strongman, J.A., 1999, "Moral hypocrisy: Appearing
moral to oneself without being so. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 525-537)

Batson told teams of two that he was performing an experiment on the impact of unequal rewards on teamwork. In each team, one member would be rewarded for responding to questions with a potentially valuable prize. Each
member of the team was told to decide who would be rewarded and was
told that the other partner would be informed the decision was made by
chance. Each was given a coin in a sealed plastic bag and given the option of tossing the coin to provide the fairest outcome. Ninety percent of the participants choose themselves as the beneficiary. Approximately
half the subjects opened the bag in their desire to demonstrate their
concern for fairness though the outcome was identical—ninety percent
declared themselves the winner, defying the laws of probability and
subsequently lying on a questionnaire that they had made the decision
ethically. A subsequent experiment was done
to label the coins and expressly state the outcome that would result
from heads or tails, without altering the outcome. Batson's
conclusion: those who claimed to be more caring and socially concerned
were most likely to open the bag to appear ethical, although their
decisions were no more just than those of the other participants. Only
when a mirror was placed in a large room directly before the subject
and great importance stressed to the participant on the value of
fairness did the outcome alter. (Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, pp. 61-2)

Batson's
finding suggests that those individuals who profess heightened social
consciousness and ethical values are actually engaging in moral
hypocrisy. They are no more "virtuous" than the rest of us. However, they are prepared to deceive and manipulate in order to win while giving the appearance of "virtue." Naturally,
this raises troubling concerns about the literary establishment's
claims of fairness since it is founded on false piety. Since
science suggests humans are not motivated by altruism, but by the
expectation of personal or genetic gain, there can be no impartiality. Instead, network clusters promote the views of their adherents. If
the literary, publishing, and academic clusters advocate social justice
over the pursuit of excellence, then, this becomes the overriding
factor influencing group selection. All those individuals who fail to adhere to the social norms are defectors and sanctimoniously denied admission. Since
defectors reproduce faster within groups, cooperators are at great
pains to keep oppositional perspectives from gaining ascendancy. One must be Liberal. One must write about women. One must tell stories about children. One must feminize male characters. One must focus on individuals who are ethnically or economically or socially challenged. One
must tell these stories within the framework of consciousness and not
let disturbing realities impinge too closely upon these fictions. These are the prevailing conditions imposed by the hypocritical "virtue" seekers. And woe to those writers who dare to resist. No one will prevent them from writing. However,
their stories will rarely be published, if at all. This is the
sanctimonious Tartuffism we refer to as "virtue" as it is currently
practiced by today's literary establishment.

Want true diversity? These days, it exists only within in the Literary Gulag. For
excellence in the pursuit of truth, the reader must look to realistic
fiction that dares to gaze out upon the world by means of narrative and
dialogue to illuminate our social circumstances. But the Defectors within the Literary Gulag are dying for want of an audience. Meanwhile,
the literary establishment publishes ever more derivative and insipid
novels that dull the reader's capability to interpret and savor truly
path-breaking stories should by chance or intervention they reach the
marketplace.

Which
brings us back to Haidt and the moral realm. He questions the liberal
assumptions that frame the values of modern western civilization. By
his account, our society places emphasis on two tenets: 1) Do No
Physical Harm (protect your kin and those most vulnerable) and 2) Do As
You Would Have Done Unto You (reciprocity/farness). However,
he notes that traditional cultures rely on a much more elaborate and
nuanced moral calculus that also includes 3) Respect for Authority
(deference), 4) Purity and Sanctity (social and spiritual rituals that
restrain excess), and 5) Loyalty to the In-Group (reward cooperators,
punish defectors). Haidt suggests this
traditional framework provides a far more comprehensive moral framework
with which to deter selfishness and integrate members. (see Nicholas
Wade's summary of Haidt's recent research in this area, "Is ‘Do Unto
Others' Written Into Our Genes?," The New York Times, September 18, 2007, pp. F1, F6-7)

The implications of Haidt's argument are staggering. Modern western society's reliance on "Do no Harm" and "Fairness" now forms the basis for our selection of stories. Publishers,
literary critics, and the academic community reward fiction that lays
claim to "virtue" and reject stories that describe the discomforting
circumstances of our reality except when these depictions present the
triumph of social justice against the claims of "hegemony." These three
"virtue" clusters—publishers, literary critics, and the academic
community—constitute the in-group. This
in-group dictates the narrow criteria for literary fiction: a
subjective world residing entirely within the minds of the characters,
an impassioned advocacy for the disadvantaged though necessarily
presented in a manner devoid of economic and social realism, and a
denunciation within these stories of masculine aggression in favor of
idealized femininity and perpetual childhood. At
no stage does the in-group acknowledge the corruption of the selection
process or the cant of its espousal of diversity while systematically
excluding all perspectives that challenge this orthodoxy. How could it? To
do so would necessitate a seismic rupture within the publishing,
literary, and academic realm that would give rise to freedom.

The solution is as apparent as the light of reason. Embrace
the neoclassical values of excellence directed toward the pursuit of
truth, that which our forefathers referred to as virtue. Pursue
this cause with the intent of the founders, applying their
disinterested scrutiny so that we might, once again, strive for exalted
standards. Acknowledge science and the less
than virtuous motivations that influence our actions but temper this
understanding with morality shaped by character and driven to
revitalize civilization. Celebrate writers
of talent and inspiration who dare to describe in realistic detail the
world in which we live so that our society may comprehend its failings,
endeavor to improve, and aspire to all that is most noble.